Thursday, August 5, 2010

Annual GenCon Rant

It's that time of year again, kids. When the fat man rolls up in big red ride and brings joy and cheer to all the gamers of the world. Only in this case, the fat man is in a YuGiOh shirt, his vehicle is littered with mostly-empty Mountain Dew cans and discarded candy wrappers, and the joy and cheer he brings is accompanied by copious amounts of horribly offensive body odor. Also, he probably has a foam sword.

Yes, it's GenCon season, and for the first time in five years, I'm NOT there. It's hard to explain to your average nerd why I'm happy to miss the biggest show in gaming, but since I write about this catastrophe of hygiene once a year, many of you have probably heard most of this already.

In the past, I've been at GenCon because I was working. The first year, I was there with a press pass, writing an article for Knucklebones Magazine. For the next three years, I was manning a booth for VixenTor Games, selling dice towers and adventure bags and dice boxes and hating nearly every minute of it. But this year, VixenTor Games is taking a break. The only excuse I have to be called a journalist is this site, and let's face it, I'm about as much a journalist as Ryan Seacrest. So I skipped it, and man am I happy about it.

The thing is, a huge number of my friends are there right now. They're probably all at a bar somewhere, drinking and slapping each other on the back and getting ready to go back to the hotel and play games for five or six hours. They'll be laughing and joking and yelling at each other (all in fun, of course, unless some of them get really drunk, and then it's all in fun and inebriation). And I'll be here, home, writing about not being with them. That's actually kind of depressing.

But then I think about what I get to avoid because I'm not at GenCon. I get to avoid a 15-hour drive. I get to avoid looking for parking in downtown Indianapolis, a city that defies rational exploration and invites travelers to get hopelessly lost. I get to avoid rude locals who hate tourists. I also get to avoid rude hotel clerks, rude GenCon staff, and rude nerds.

I get to avoid staying in a hotel with two or three other people in a room that has fewer beds than guests (that happens every year). I get to avoid walking all over a steamy hot town, dripping sweat everywhere, just to get back to my hotel room and discover they've turned off the water (that happened last year). I won't have to ride in the world's slowest elevators, taking fifteen minutes to get twelve floors, unless I decide to hike down twelve flights of stairs and arrive at the ground floor dripping sweat on anything within ten feet, and all because the Embassy Suites managed to have one of their elevators break down right before every occupant in the hotel tried to leave at the same time (that also happens every year).

I won't have to push my way through an enormous convention hall that, despite being four square city blocks, is bursting at the seams with pimpled adults dressed like Jedi Knights and social throwbacks arguing that there's no way their paladin would have died if the DM hadn't forgotten about the potion of putrescence. The restaurants I visit this week will be completely clear of elf ears, demon horns, fairy wings or alien contact lenses.

Another joy to which I will not be party is the unbridled pleasure of dealing with the degenerate assholes who run the show. Out of, say, ten GenCon staffers, it seems that at least nine will be so unfriendly that their faces are locked in a permanent rictus of disapproval and disgust. The security guards are abusive. The check-in staff are disinterested. The people setting up the hall look at the vendors like we were all just tracked in on the bottom of their shoes.

However, I also won't be playing all the year's hottest games before anyone else sees them. I won't be visiting my favorite booth, a guy who sells second-hand miniatures at prices that make me wish I had taken a second mortgage. I won't be sampling any of the delicious beer found in many of the Indianapolis mini-breweries, either, and I'll miss that more than anything else.

So there are parts of GenCon that I actually like. I love how, after the hall finally closes and my friends are all finished running their tournaments and counting their money, we all get together to drink and enjoy each others' company. I really like being right in the middle of the business of games, even if much of that particular business is overrun with sleazeballs and rank amateurs.

I really don't miss being at GenCon. The cons outweigh the pros by a massive amount. But if I could plan a perfect vacation, I would be on a beach in Cancun with my wife all day, and in downtown Indianapolis during GenCon season at night.

One of these days, I'm going to go to GenCon and never actually go to the convention. That's going to rule.

I'd like to tell my own GenCon story. This year, my ten year old joined me on that 15 hour drive. I'm spending a lot more money on a hotel room because it's just the two of us. I'm supplementing his food, entertainment and purchases. We live in the room where my friends are, and where I've stayed in the past, after hours; gaming until well past midnight.

The rewards have been: seeing him devour the Dust Tactics rulebook on the ride up, watching him enjoy dungeon crawling during RPG demos in the Hall, and watching him get trained on Dust Tactics by Paolo Parente himself.

Most of all, I'm seeing more of my boy than I usually get to; we're having a blast; and I see him light up as I pass on the things that I've come to enjoy these past five years. I guess I just have a better reason to go.

I wish I would have known that The Embassy Suites sucks balls before I booked me a room there. Their elevators are an abomination, the TV doesn't work sometimes and the room is just filthy. Never again will I stay at this EXPENSIVE dump.

I really enjoyed GenCon last time I went (which was also the first time I've ever went), but I can turn off my sense of smell. I couldn't smell most things for most of my life due to some major nose problems, so now it's just second nature to turn off or ignore that part of my brain which sends the "ew" signal.

GenCon is awesome if you can come and go as you please and have plenty of friends to hang out with. I found my time so enjoyable because I had all that.

Plus it doesn't hurt that I'm bigger than nearly anybody else I might run into and have no problems letting people know I'm coming through or that they're being jacktards for blocking the aisle. Being firmly vocal to a bunch of socially ignorant shut-ins is actually pretty fun. You don't even have to be rude - and they'll still get that rabbit in the headlights look sometimes.

Maybe try going to just game and hang out with friends, it works well for me, I really didn't find rude people - just other gamers excited about games.

Way way to much fun was had this year at GC - darn shame it is a whole year till the next one! My goal is to be able to afford a sweat suite, got to stay in one with a big group - now I know I must have one of my own - well with just 4 people 2 rooms will be perfect for my lifestyle.

Using This Site

If you want to see if I already reviewed something, it's easy. Just type the name of the game you want to see in the little navbar at the top of this window and click 'SEARCH BLOG'. You'll see every article that includes that search term. Great for finding out if I reviewed Carcassonne; not so great if you're looking for Risk. What am I, a genie in a bottle?

If you want to contact me, my email address is in my profile here (right under this little blurb - it's in orange - yeah, right there). If you've got a game you want reviewed, or you want to suggest a trade, or if you just hate me and want to let me know how much I suck, there it is. Email away.

One more thing - somebody asked if I get my games for free. Well, duh. I wouldn't do all this work if I had to pay for the games. Although sometimes I do pay for a game and then write about it, you can pretty much assume that anything I review, I got for free. Even if I didn't. It's not really any of your business, anyway.